Theft By Chocolate...

Author BiographySoon after finishing her graduate studies in history, author Luba Lesychyn (le-si-shin) landed on the doorstep of Canada’s largest museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, where she worked for more than 20 years. Moving from positions in the Education and Programs Departments to the Museum’s consulting branch, she concluded her career in the office that managed the museum’s recent controversial architectural renovation.

After leaving the museum, Luba worked for several years in an administrative and research capacity for a private museum consulting firm with offices in Toronto and London, England. She currently works for an engineering consulting firm, but spent most of her career in the cultural and educational sectors. She has also been teaching yoga for more than 15 years in her home town of Toronto.

Theft by Chocolate is Luba’s debut novel though she has been amusing people with her writing since the age of eight. Her love of chocolate precedes this age and she has been in and out of chocolate rehab for most of her adult life.

When not writing or looking for her next chocolate fix, Luba can be found in dance classes, trekking to remote waterfalls in the mountain rain forest in Puerto Rico, running through the streets of Paris or doing any other number of calorie-burning activities that help offset the calories consumed in her chocolate intake. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Special Note from the AuthorI so deeply regret to announce that my original publisher, Attica Books, has closed its doors. We had a remarkable working relationship. It is not from a lack of commitment or an incredible work ethic that Attica is no longer with us. It is, instead, a sign of the precarious nature of the current publishing industry. Eloise and Anselm Aston continue to provide me with both moral support and their expertise despite the fact that our official relationship has been completed.

Theft By Chocolate isa cheeky museum mystery about a woman looking for chocolate, love and an international art thief in all the wrong places.

The first of three books in ﻿The Chocolate Capers﻿series is a love letter to the museum world, in which Luba worked for over twenty years (Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and Cultural Innovations, a private museum consulting firm headquartered in Toronto and London, UK). The book surprises readers with its unusual combination of Bridget-Jones's-Diary-like humour and thriller elements.

Theft By Chocolate is inspired by the author's experiences at Canada's largest museum and by a real-life and never-solved heist at the Royal Ontario Museum in the early 1980s that rocked the security industry globally. The taut page-turner is a fictional imagining, weaving the historical event into a 21st-century setting and into the capricious escapades of a fumbling, chocolate-addicted amateur sleuth and reluctant cougar.

Chocolate addict Kalena Boyko wasn’t prepared for this. Heading to work at Canada’s largest museum as an administrator, she hoped for quiet and uninterrupted access to her secret chocolate stash. Instead she’s assigned to manage the high-profile Treasures of the Maya exhibition with her loathed former boss, Richard Pritchard.

With no warning, her life is capsized and propelled into warp speed as she stumbles across an insider plot that could jeopardize the exhibit and the reputation of the museum.

After hearing about a recent botched theft at the museum and an unsolved jewel heist in the past from security guard and amateur sleuth Marco Zeffirelli, Kalena becomes suspicious of Richard and is convinced he’s planning to sabotage the Treasures of the Maya exhibition.

Her suspicions, and the appearance of the mysterious but charming Geoffrey Ogden from the London office, don’t help her concentration. The Treasures of the Maya seems cursed as problem after problem arises, including the disappearance of the world’s oldest piece of chocolate, the signature object in the exhibit.

You have a substance abuse problem when...

1. Your friends won't leave you alone in a room with a chocolate dessert.2. Your yoga students give you chocolate as thank you gifts.